There Was a Trailer for Lord & Miller’s ‘Solo’ We Never Got to See

Star Wars Celebration 2017 in Orlando had pretty much everything a Star Wars fan could possibly want. There was an incredible panel dedicated to the 40 year history of Star Wars, including a surprise appearance from Harrison Ford and an unannounced symphonic performance of Star Wars music conducted by John Williams. There was new footage from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. There were previews of Star Wars toys, and games, and cosplayers galore.

But there was one notable omission: There was nothing fromSolo: A Star Wars Story. Most fans predicted, at minimum, a surprise cameo from the cast and creators of the spinoff film, which had already been shooting for months through the winter and spring of 2017. They got bupkis. Lucasfilm didn’t announce the official title of the movie. They didn’t reveal any sort of first look at Alden Ehrenreich in costume as the young Han Solo. None of the stars or the directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, showed up in person, or even in a video message. Instead, Miller tweeted an apology for missing Celebration, adding “Can't wait to show you how special this movie is!”

A year later, we’re still waiting. About two months after that tweet, on June 20, 2017, Lucasfilm announced it was “parting ways” with Lord and Miller on Solo. (“Our vision and process weren’t aligned with our partners on this project,” Lord and Miller said in their joint statement.) The announcement retroactively made sense of Solo’s mysterious absence from Celebration. But there was even more to the story: Lucasfilm had created a Solo trailer to show at Star Wars Celebration, assembled from the footage from Lord and Miller’s shoot. They just chose not to screen it. According to my source, the trailer was cut together and then shelved for exactly the same reasons that Lord and Miller were let go two months later; Lucasfilm wasn’t happy with it.

Of course the question then becomes whether we could ever see this trailer, or a cut of Solo that reflects Lord and Miller’s vision of the movie. I don’t have any inside information about that, but my outsider’s assumption would be we won’t. There’s dozens of fully completed episodes of a Star Wars television show in Lucasfilm’s vault that have never been released, because they don’t match the continuity, style, or tone of the Star Wars content Disney is producing now. They don’t just release stuff just because they can. It all has to fit together.

Clearly, the powers that be felt that Lord and Miller’s Solo didn’t fit with the rest of the Star Wars universe. After all the upheaval on that film, Rogue One, and Episode IX, that’s not too surprising. Few film companies guard their properties the way Lucasfilm does. For proof of that, just look at the closing credits of Solo when it opens in theaters on Friday.